Wattisham St Nicholas baptisms, burials and marriages from 1580-1812 are now online! But, in the voice that you hear on the tube, “Mind the gap!” or, should I say, gaps!
Wattisham’s registers have had a tough old time – the earliest register, which went up to 1680, was destroyed, apart from a page of baptisms and marriages.
Then there’s a huge near-40 year gap in marriages, from 1744-1783. This seems to be down to the death of John Hall in April 1783 – he’d been the parish clerk for 49 years, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the gap is almost entirely his tenure and ends after a new clerk is appointed – I strongly suspect that someone started a pre-printed marriage register for Wattisham in 1754, and John put it somewhere… never to be discovered again after he passed away! Rather a shame as I think it’s likely that the missing marriage of two of my ancestors would’ve been within its pages, and it doesn’t look like it’s in the Bishop’s Transcripts (to follow, eventually…). Ah, well….!!! If you’ve been going round in circles vainly trying to find a marriage for that period in this area, then this may be the reason!
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